Issue |
EPJ Web Conf.
Volume 247, 2021
PHYSOR2020 – International Conference on Physics of Reactors: Transition to a Scalable Nuclear Future
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 01004 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | Reactor Concepts and Special Mission Reactors | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202124701004 | |
Published online | 22 February 2021 |
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202124701004
CORE DESIGN OF BREED & BURN MOLTEN SALT FAST REACTOR
1 Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
2 Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
3 Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1PZ, United Kingdom
4 Moltex Energy Ltd.
13 The Courtyard, Timothy’s Bridge Road, Stratford-upon-Avon, CV37 9NP, United Kingdom
ec600@cam.ac.uk
es607@cam.ac.uk
aak52@cam.ac.uk
ianscott@moltexenergy.com
Author’s alternative email address: ec600@alumni.cam.ac.uk
Published online: 22 February 2021
Previous designs of once-through solid-fuelled breed-and-burn (B&B) reactor and the conventional molten salt reactor (MSR) concepts suffer from material limitation of neutron irradiation damage and chemical corrosion. A novel breed-and-burn molten salt reactor (BBMSR) concept uses separate molten salt fuel and coolant in a linear assembly core configuration. Similar to Moltex Energy Stable Salt Reactor (SSR) design, the configuration with fuel salt contained in fuel tubes and coolant salt in pool type reactor vessel has been previously studied. The study confirmed that breed-and-burn operation is feasible in principle, however with a low neutronic margin. The objective of this paper was to seek improvements of the neutronic margin with a metallic natural uranium blanket design. A parametric study was performed for the natural uranium blanket design. BBMSR neutronic performance simulation was modelled using Serpent, a Monte Carlo reactor physics code, with a single 3D hexagonal channel containing a single fuel tube in an infinite lattice with reflective radial and vacuum axial boundary conditions. The addition of a metallic natural uranium blanket inside the fuel tube, which increases the natural uranium metal to fuel salt ratio (ϒ) of the BBMSR, was shown to significantly increase the neutronic performance of the BBMSR.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.